Sliding Across
by SelenicSoul83
Summary: Have you ever tried your hand at a sliding puzzle? Sliding left, right, top, bottom, repeat. Those nerve-wracking things, they're, they're.. easy enough for a 5-year-old to solve? Well, Luke Triton isn't just your everyday 5-year-old after all.


**A/N** Story I wrote about a year (o.O) ago. Can't believe that myself.. Anyway, I finally got around to uploading it. I hope you enjoy it ^^

(It's also been a year since I read it, so beware of whatever you should beware of)

**Disclaimer:** Unfortunately, I don't own these characters. Layton, Luke and Flora belong to Level-5.

I do, however, own the very crappy story title =D

* * *

**~ Sliding Across ~**

Luke had been tidying up, or rather messing out, the Professor's study ever since morning. It had been around noon when the boy actually started to see some improvement as he finally got Flora to help him out on this. The Professor had been giving lectures all day to make up for lost time. Their little trip to the 'future' to them might have seemed to rush by, but apparently the students were quite disappointed in their Professor not showing up. Luke wanted to help his mentor by at least taking care of this one room. The Professor wasn't good at any form of organization, which was painfully obvious to anyone who'd dare to take a look around his study. Luke came across some novels, a lot of puzzle books and even some fossils safely tucked away between piles of old newspapers. After a good 7 hours of not so intensive cleaning – the young apprentice often ended up being distracted by the puzzles – the two children had put all the books back in their designated spot on the shelves, put the fossils in proper boxes and got rid of most of the old newspapers. Letters were collected on his desk for the Professor to pick the important ones out and study material was put in a large box that said so. By the time the Professor arrived home, Flora had gone up to her room to answer the letter her stepmother had send her and Luke was lying flat on his stomach on the couch, trying to solve a sliding puzzle. He had seen a lot of those today and this particular one with its monkey design as it fell down a box and hit the boy in the face. This had caused yet another distraction as the boy crouched down and blinked his eyes constantly for another minute to stop his right one from hurting. Luckily, after Luke's hard work of blood, sweat and literal tears, Layton had been more than happy with the outcome, although Luke had his mentor promise him to keep it this way.

"No matter how much I like puzzles, I'm never going to get the hang of these ones," Luke sighed as he put the sliding puzzle on the table. The boy turned to lie on his back. He looked up curiously at the Professor as the man took the puzzle and motioned for him to pull up his legs. Luke sat himself upright and on his knees to watch the Professor as the later took a look at the matter on hand.

"You used to like them." The Professor looked down at his apprentice and smiled that warm smile of his. "Especially this one."

Luke frowned. "I did?" he asked. The boy couldn't remember ever liking these nerve-racking things. Just what was the Professor talking about?

* * *

"Hershel," the man greeted. "I'm so glad you could find the time to come by." The man that had answered the door had dark brown hair and seemed to be growing a full beard. He should have been somewhere in his early-thirties, about the same age as the friend he had invited over, namely Hershel Layton. Layton was invited in and took place on the couch in the living room.

"I will always have time to help out a friend," Layton answered once the other man sat down across him. "You know that, Clark."

Doland, the house servant, asked the man if he'd like to have some tea, an offer the true gentleman couldn't turn down. After having a cup and thanking Doland, the Professor turned back to his friend.

"What was it you wanted to show me?"

Clark smiled and pulled out a small cardboard box from underneath the tea table. Upon opening it, there was some sort of plate carefully wrapped in bubble wrap. The man shoved it in Layton's direction and started explaining. "We found this on the site several days ago, and I think it might tell us more about tha-" Clark got interrupted as a little child opened the door and ran in.

The 5-year old boy jumped on the couch next to his father. "Daddy, I want to go outside!" he stated clearly, indirectly but obviously asking his father to go with him.

"Not now Luke." Clark rubbed the boy over his head. "Daddy has some work to do first."

Only now did the boy notice the man sitting at the other side of the table. He sat down against the back side and looked down in his lap, shyly hiding his eyes beneath the blue cap he was wearing. Layton smiled kindly at the boy, who was now tugging at a loose strand of his blue shirt.

Looking back up, the boy said to the man: "That's a funny hat."

"I suppose you could say that." The Professor chuckled.

Luke shrugged. "It looks cool, though," he said, earning himself another chuckle from the Professor as the later one slightly adjusted his top-hat.

Seeing how Luke didn't make any attempt to leave the room, Clark was glad the boy didn't cause any disturbance as he explained the rest of his theory on the artifact to his friend. The two archeologists started mutually exchanging some facts as well as their own thoughts on it. After quite a while, the young boy clearly started to get bored of just sitting there and moved to the edge of the couch to start rocking his short legs back and forth.

"Luke, could you please stop doing that?" Annoyance sounded through Clark's voice as he asked this. "We're almost done, really," he assured his son.

The boy moved back and muttered a quiet 'sorry' before pulling up his legs and placing his chin on top of them, looking uninterested at the old plate.

The Professor seemed to have remembered something as he suddenly picked up his trunk, which he had placed down next to the couch earlier.

"I think I have something with me you might like," Layton said to the boy. The Professor had actually just returned from a meeting before coming to Misthallery and always took something with him to kill some time on the bus, which he often had to take seen how it was by far the easiest way to travel in and between the larger cities. Luke stood up from the couch and walked up to the man. Layton handed him a small three by three sliding puzzle. The boy looked down at the board. He recognized a little monkey, even though the image looked somewhat off. Luke looked back up at the Professor and the man smiled at those large eyes staring at him. The boy shook his head after Layton asked him if he had ever solved one of these before.

"Basically," the Professor started explaining, "you slide the pieces around by using the one open spot right here," he pointed at the top right square.

Luke slid up the piece below it and then moved the center piece to the right. "Like this?"

Layton nodded. "Exactly, but if you take a good look at the picture and the positions of the different parts, you will find a way to complete it without having to slide around the pieces too much."

The boy climbed onto the couch and sat down next to the Professor. His blue cap fell off as he leaned his head onto the back side of the couch. Focusing on the puzzle he had been given, Luke disturbed the two adults not once as they started knotting together the loose ends of their theories on the piece of history in front of them. After what couldn't have been more than three minutes, Clark carefully put away the artifact as the two had concluded their search for answers. He already felt happy at the thought of being able to explain his deductions to the others at the site.

It was at this same moment that Luke reached the sliding puzzle out to the Professor, who looked at it in surprise.

"Is this right?" the boy asked hopeful. A wide smile then spread across his face as the Professor smiled gently and nodded.

"It is," Layton ruffled the boy through his light brown hair. "You did a really good job on this, my boy."

The boy ran happily towards his father, saying: "Look daddy! I've solved it!"

* * *

"Like I said, you really liked this puzzle," the Professor concluded, handing the object at hand back to the boy who had been listening carefully to every word of the story. "Now, try and finish this while I scan through my mail." The Professor stood, patting Luke's head just once when passing him from behind the couch.

Luke sat down upright against the back side of the couch, holding the puzzle against his bend up legs. Concentration soon turned into frustration as the monkey now tried to bite his own tail.

"I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere near the right picture.." the boy sighed. He held the puzzle on top of his knees to have some overlook. After a minute, he found out that tilting his head left and right wasn't going to magically move the pieces back into place.

In the meantime, Layton had thrown out any letters he deemed unnecessary and poured himself a cup of tea. The man looked through his bookshelves and picked out a thin book of short stories. He felt like having an easy read after a rather exhausting day at the university.

"You seem to be getting there," the Professor said, not looking up from his book.

"Thanks for your lack of interest," Luke muttered under his breath.

Still frustrated with the odd-looking monkey, nothing could get the boy out of his concentration. This caused him to jump a little as someone spoke out the boy's name right beside his ear.

"Flora! W-when did you get here?" Luke stuttered, his heart still racing after this sudden surprise.

"Just a moment ago," the girl raised an eyebrow. She then turned to Layton, who appeared to be quite intrigued by the book as he didn't even look up from it as he told her hello. Not wanting to disturb the man, Flora shook her head and put the letter she had written down at the tea table. The girl sat down beside Luke and joined him into staring at the sliding puzzle.

She turned her head towards him. "Can I try?"

Luke shrugged. "Sure, go ahead." He held out the puzzle with his right hand, seemingly not caring about it anymore.

After handing it to the girl, Luke headed for the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. A glass of water the boy almost choked on the moment he got back into the living room. Flora held out the now solved sliding puzzle, even earning the Professor to look up for a moment.

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**A/N** Who would've thought..

Please review*

xSelenicSoulx


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